Trustworthiness was differentiated from attractiveness, which was seen as linked to competence, but not consistently with social warmth.

Etcoff’s team concluded that cosmetics could influence automatic judgments because attractiveness “rivets attention, and impels actions that help ensure the survival of our genes.”

Most people recognize the bias in assuming that attractive people are competent and that unattractive people are not, yet impression management remains crucial in the workplace and in the political arena.

-*Where have you seen appearance exert an influence in workplace credibility, decision-making and role advancement?

Men who expressed anger were more likely to influence their peers, found Arizona State University’s Jessica Salerno and Liana Peter-Hagene of University of Illinois, in their study of computer-mediated mock jury proceedings.
In contrast, women who expressed anger were seen as less influential, reinforcing trends reported in a previous blog post.

Liana Peter-Hagene

More than 200 U.S. jury-eligible volunteers reviewed opening arguments and closing statements, eyewitness testimonies, crime scene photographs, and an image of the alleged weapon in a homicide.

Participants made individual verdict choices, then exchanged instant messages by computer, with “peers” who were said to be deliberating their verdict decisions.

In fact, “peer” messages were scripted, with four of the fictional jurors agreeing with the participant’s verdict, and one disagreeing.
The dissenting participant had a male user name or a female user name or a gender-neutral name.

Victoria Brescoll

Half of the dissenting messages contained no emotion, anger, or fear, and these communications had no influence on participants’ opinions.

However, participants’ confidence in their verdict decision significantlydropped when a single “male dissenter” sent angry messages, characterized by “shouting” in all capital letters.
Confidence in the verdict decision dropped even when the vote was shared by the majority of other “jurors.”
This finding suggests the persuasive impact of a single male dissenter’s angry communication.

In contrast, volunteers became more confident in their initial verdict decisions when their vote was echoed by the majority of other participants.

This confidence was was maintained when a single female dissenter responded with angry emotional message, suggesting that “female” anger was less influential.
“Women’s” dissent seemed to reinforce conviction in the shared decision.

People often infer others’ personality attributes through visual observation, called facial profiling by Georgetown University Hospital’s Michael J. Reilly, Jaclyn A. Tomsic and Steven P. Davison, collaborating with Stephen J. Fernandez of MedStar Health Research Institute.
This cognitive shortcut can lead to biased impressions and limited opportunities for those unfavorably judged.

Jaclyn A. Tomsic

These researchers asked more than 24 raters to evaluate photographs of 30 different women who were “well-matched neutral facial expressions.

Each rater evaluated 10 images, including five photographs before the person had plastic surgery procedures and five images following surgical procedures which included:

Chin implant,

Eyebrow-lift,

Lower blepharoplasty (lower eye lift),

Upper blepharoplasty (upper eye lift),

Neck-lift,

Rhytidectomy (face-lift).

Steven Davison

The raters were unaware that some had plastic surgery procedures, and they evaluated each photograph on a 7-point scale for perceived:

Aggressiveness,

Extroversion,

Likability,

Risk-seeking,

Social skills,

Trustworthiness,

Attractiveness.

These procedures resulted in cosmetic improvements to eyes and mouth, two regions crucial to expressing and interpreting emotions.

The research team concluded:
“The eyes are highly diagnostic for attractiveness as well as for trustworthiness which may explain why…patients undergoing lower (eyelid surgery) were found to be significantly more attractive and feminine, and had a trend toward improved trustworthiness...“The corner of the mouth is the diagnostic region for both happy and surprised expressions and plays an important role in the perception of personality traits, such as extroversion.

“A subtle upturn of the mouth and fullness in the cheeks can make a person look more intelligent and socially skilled.

“This appearance may explain why patients undergoing a facelift procedure … are found to be significantly more likable and socially skilled postoperatively.”

Faces that resemble typical emotional expressions can lead to misattributed personality traits and biased impressions.
These judgments can change for the better when a person’s appearance changes after plastic surgery.

-*To what extent do people’s personality traits seems different following plastic surgery?
-*How often are people treated differently following plastic surgery?

Fang and Huang examined U.S. equity analysts’ alumni connections with senior officers and board members of up to eight companies, using an approach pioneered by Harvard’s Lauren Cohen, and Christopher Malloy with Andrea Frazzini, of AQR Capital Management.

Connections directly contributed to male analysts’ likelihood of being named to the “All America Research Team” (AA).
This relationship did not hold for female analysts, suggesting that investors subjectively value male analysts’ connections but not those of female analysts.
This difference leads to significant financial consequences for male and female analysts because those awarded the AA title earn around three times morethan those without.

This significantly different impact of similar connections early in women’s and men’s careers could explain gender gaps that exist throughout long-term career trajectories.This finding supports Herminia Ibarra’s similar results for men and women in an advertising firm, where men capitalized on network ties to improve their employment positions.

Fang and Huang concluded that despite mandated protections against gender discrimination in the U.S, men and women may be evaluated using different subjective criteria, even with the benefit of social connections.
This leads to differential career advancement for women and men.

Ronald Burt

These career-related social connections, or social capital, are affected by legitimacy, reputation, and network structures, argued University of Chicago’s Ronald Burt.
He noted that “holes” in a social network are entrepreneurial opportunitiesto add value, and Burt argued that women should have equal opportunities to fill network holes and increase their possibility of advancement.

However, he noted that “entrepreneurial networks linked to early promotion for senior men do not work for women” because women are not accepted as legitimate members of the population of highly promotable candidates.

Burt opined that women and minorities who succeed despite this disadvantage gain access to social capital by leveraging the network of a legitimate strategic partners.
This economic analysis may explain the powerful advantage of sponsors for women and minorities in the workplace.

-How do you identify and fill “structural holes in social capital networks”?

When Stanford’s Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson now of NYU, helped women and African Americans participants resist these stereotypes, participants’ performance improvedmore than when the researchers activated a positive shared identity.

Anthony Greenwald

Stereotypes can be invoked by “implicit primes” even when people explicitly disavowed stereotypes, found University of Washington’s Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, then at Yale.However, when volunteers focused on tasks, including judgment challenges about members of a stereotyped group, participants were less likely to render discriminatory decisions.

People can manage stereotype threat by explicitly mentioning the stereotype to activate resistance.
In addition, people can focus on a shared identity that transcends the stigmatized group identity, and identifying examples that contradict the stereotype.

Some women experience anxiety when required to showcase their accomplishments and skills.
At the same time, they also understand that self-promotion, personal marketing, and “selling yourself” can be required to be achieve recognition and rewards at work.

Gender norms about “modesty” can contribute to women’s discomfort in highlighting their accomplishments.
These implicit rules advocate that women:

hold a moderate opinion of their skills,

appear humble and avoid pretentiousness,

disclaim personal responsibility for success,

accept personal responsibility for failure.

Laurie Rudman

In contrast, many American men proactively showcase their skills, and observers see self-promoting men as “competent,” “capable,” and “confident.”And men who do not advertise their successes generally experience “backlash” like women who self-promote, according to Skidmore’s CorinneMoss-Racusin, Julie Phelan of Langer Research Associates, and Rutgers’ Laurie Rudman.This suggests that anyone who behaves contrary to expected gender stereotypes may be less favorably evaluated and advance more slowly in careers.

More than 75 women wrote sample essays for a merit-based scholarship valued up to USD $5,000.
One group was composed essays about their own accomplishments whereas another group wrote about another person’s accomplishments.

Andrew Elliott

They also completed Achievement Goal Questionnaire – Revised by University of Rochester Andrew Elliot and Kou Murayama of Tokyo Institute of Technology to evaluate “performance approach” and “performance avoidance.”

The laboratory contained a black box described as a “subliminal noise generator.”Half the volunteers were told the box produced “inaudible but potentially uncomfortable ultra-high frequency noise,” and they were later asked to evaluate “the effects of extraneous distractions on task performance.”The remaining participants received no information about the black box.

Victoria Brescoll

Women who could attribute their experience to the “noise generator” produced higher-quality, more convincing descriptions of their achievements, measured by being awarded significantly higher scholarships prizes.
These women also said they were more interested in the task, which is typically associated with greater intrinsic motivation to showcase personal accomplishments.

In contrast, women who violated the “modesty” norm without reference to the “noise generator” said they:

One “workaround” for this self-promotion double bind is to reciprocally advocate for colleagues.This strategy highlights colleagues’ accomplishments as organizational policies evolve to encourage everyone’s self-promotion.
An example is Google’s self-nomination process for advancement and promotion, coupled with reminder emails to submit self-nominations.

When people redefine showcasing their professional accomplishments as “part of the job,” they tend to perform more effectively and experience less cognitive dissonance.

How do you manage the norm against women “bragging” and showcasing their accomplishments?

Many people overestimate their own expertise, and do not recognize their own incompetence.
It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect and has been demonstrated for people’s overestimates of their skills in grammar, emotional intelligence, logical reasoning, firearm care and safety, debating, and financial acumen.

Emily Rosenzweig

Cornell’s Stav Atir and Emily Rosenzweig of Tulane asked volunteers if they were familiar with concepts like centripetal force and photon as well as fictitious terms including plates of parallax, ultra-lipid, and cholarine.

Another study by University of California San Diego’s Elanor Williams, Justin Kruger of NYU, and Cornell’s David Dunning asked volunteers to complete a logical reasoning task, an intuitive physics problem, and a financial acumen challenge.

Similarly, people who filed for bankruptcy said they had high confidence in their financial acumen, though their financial management skills didn’t keep them solvent.

More than 25,000 people rated their financial knowledge and completed the 2012 National Financial Capability Study, conducted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority with the U.S. Treasury.
Of these, 800 respondents said they filed bankruptcy within the previous two years.

Even 80 professionally-credentialed physical scientists at top universities provided a number of inaccurate purpose-driven (“teleological”) explanations about “why things happen” in the natural world.

Joshua Rottman

When these professional scientists provided explanations under time constraints, they were twice as likely to endorse inaccurate rationales, reported Boston University’s Deborah Kelemen, Joshua Rottman, and Rebecca Seston.